The headscarf ban and Austria’s imagined Muslim
It was one of the last bills passed by the Austrian Parliament. On May 15, 2019, the ruling center-right party got together with the far-right party to impose a ban on the wearing of the Muslim headscarf in primary schools. The law makes some effort to sound like it’s not targeting solely Muslims but all “ideologically and religiously” motivated clothing that covers the hair. Both the Jewish “kippah” and the Sikh turban were exempt from the ban. The headscarf, obviously, was not.
Like France, Austria has been obsessed with Muslim women’s clothing for some time. About a year and a half ago, the country passed the burka ban. To avoid the controversial optics of banning just the burka, that law was titled “The Anti-Face Covering Act” which pretended to ban all coverings of all or most of the face. In an effort to show that they were not targeting Muslim women, police made a big show of stopping cyclists whose scarves were covering their faces and even going after sports mascots and street musicians.
Of course, the real target was Muslim women. Much to the chagrin of the law’s advocates, there were few confrontations with Muslim women wearing full face veils. The reason was simple; there just aren’t that many women in Austria who wear a niqab or full face veil. The fervor to ban the garment came from the view that Muslim culture was invading the country and was going to dominate Austrian tradition and customs.
The idea of the sinister Muslim woman plotting against the state and with a face hidden by a face covering has now been replaced with the view that she needs rescuing. The premise behind this law, targeting little Muslim girls in elementary school is that it will save these children from their own patriarchal culture by ensuring they are not wearing the headscarf. The Austrian elementary school is thus set up as the institution safeguarding enlightened Austrian values, with no discussion of the trauma that could be inflicted on these young children brought into the battleground because of Islamophobic laws.
Simply put, the headscarf ban, like the burka ban before it, is a greater indicator of Austria and Austrians’ own fears and confusions than the reality of Austria’s Muslim community.
Rafia Zakaria
This trauma has been conveniently ignored by Austrian lawmakers in their rush to pass the law. As is the case in France, where a similar law against girls wearing headscarves in schools has been in effect since 2004, the law uses Muslims or rather the Muslim of the Austrian or French imagination, to define itself.
Demonizing Muslims by propagating this mythic image of them thus becomes crucial to defining what is authentically Austrian and consequently what is good and praiseworthy. Simply put, the headscarf ban, like the burka ban before it, is a greater indicator of Austria and Austrians’ own fears and confusions than the reality of Austria’s Muslim community. The truth and reality of Muslims, the fact that most don’t wear face veils etc are facts to be ignored so that the imagined Muslims of Austria’s Islamophobic imagination remain alive and visible to everyone in the country.
The law itself came at a time when the Austrian ruling party coalition was in danger of falling apart for reasons entirely separate from the headscarf issue. A corruption scandal was brewing and sure enough, in less than a week into the life of the law, the Austrian parliament was dissolved.
The truth of the headscarf ban in Austria then, has little to do with the Muslim schoolgirl or desires for her empowerment. Like many European countries of late, the specter of saving little Muslim girls from being schooled into submission, has more to do with creating a sense of unity and identity among the larger population. In uniting against the headscarf in school or the full face veil in public, Austrians are given the opportunity to define themselves against the imagined Muslim conservatism among them.
But the damage is all too real. Austria’s Muslim community, already beleaguered and alarmed at the hateful rhetoric deployed against them by the country’s far right, now faces yet another means of being deemed lesser citizens. Dragging young Muslim girls into the fraught and increasingly venomous political milieu will imprint on their young minds that they are unworthy and not free to practice their own faith.
– Rafia Zakaria is the author of “The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan” and “Veil.” She writes regularly for The Guardian, the Boston Review, the New Republic, the New York Times Book Review and many other publications.
Twitter: @rafiazakaria
